Tokyo Olympics: Mary Kom, mother courage

“I dared to dream big inspite of my humble beginnings.” MC Mary Kom says this towards the end of her slim autobiography “Unbreakable”. When the book was published in 2013, Mary was a mother of three and the only Indian woman boxer with an Olympic medal. She was also a five-time world champion. All her goals--farmland for her father, an SUV for her parents, a boxing academy, a job through the sports quota, a house--had been achieved. Soon after, a biopic would be released which would inspire Iranian Sadaf Khadem to make boxing her calling even if it meant living in exile.

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But if you thought all that was reason enough for Mary to stop taking punches, to stop punishing her body, check out the video in the Olympic channel after she got her ticket to Tokyo.

Sweat shining, Mary shrills in delight, takes a step back, presses the ticket against her forehead before kissing it. And then, with eyes growing wider, she points her still-taped hands to the ticket and exclaims: “For this only, so long, so long, long, long, I was working so hard. Thank you so much. I deserve, I deserve, I think.”

It would be difficult to disagree with that. Because five years after a split decision against Germany’s Azize Nimani robbed her of a chance to play in Rio 2016, Mary didn’t stop dreaming. She didn’t when Nikhat Zareen became the national champion in the 51kg category and demanded a fair trial ahead of the Olympic qualifiers in 2020. Mary beat her 9-1 showing that Zareen may well be the future but she isn’t yet the past. She has battled dengue, hard lockdowns and long stretches of no training last year, trained through mastitis after her twins were born in 2007, stayed away from her newborns for months--as they got older, they would ask Mary when she would come home, “one night or two nights,” she said--and yo-yoed between weight categories (48kg in 2001; 45kg from 2002-08; 48kg in 2010 and 51kg since 2012) because she wanted to be the best.

And without undermining her record six world titles--in addition to a silver and a bronze--five Asian Championship gold and two silver, an Asian Games gold and a bronze, and a Commonwealth Games gold, being the best for Mary means an Olympic gold. It has been that way since August 13, 2009 when the International Olympic Committee announced that women’s boxing would be an Olympic sport from the 2012 Games. Citing Mary’s success was part of the pitch by AIBA, boxing’s apex body.

“Being a world champion, if I am not able to fight in the Olympics, there is no value for me. What keeps me hungry is the Olympic gold. Once I win that, I think I will be satisfied,” Mary, now a mother of four who will be 39 in November, has said. She is among five Indian women with Olympic medals--Saina Nehwal, Karnam Malleswari, PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik being the others-- and no one has struck gold.

Hence the whoop in Amman in March, 2020, after beating Irish Magno of the Philippines 5-0 to seal a semi-final berth in the Asian qualifiers--one that helped Mary qualify for her second Olympics.

Maybe things would have been different if India gave equal value to her world titles as it did to the Olympic bronze. The first medal fetched Mary a job as a constable in the Manipur police department. She refused. It wasn’t till her second world title, in 2005, that Mary was offered a sub-inspector’s post. But after she made the podium in London, Mary became Superintendent of Police, a Rajya Sabha member and got land for her academy.

So, like Muhammad Ali, Mary has gone to Tokyo aiming to “whup’em all.” At Friday’s opening ceremony, she and men’s hockey captain Manpreet Singh were India’s flag-bearers.

Mary’s story began in Kangathei village near Imphal. Her father, a wrestler who abandoned the idea of taking the sport seriously because life was hard, had moved from their ancestral place Sagang Khapui “because it was one less mouth to feed”. With school some distance away, most days in childhood were long but ploughing fields with buffalos, lifting sacks of rice and heavy farming tools, carrying water across long distances, going up the hill to collect firewood prepared her for a life as a ring warrior, she has said.

“I am tough because of my background. My strength and stamina continue to be my strong points when I fight bigger opponents in the ring,” she says in her book.

If Nicola Adams, the two-time Olympic champion from Britain who beat Mary in the 2012, took up the sport because she got curious after her mother went a gymnasium that also held boxing classes, Mary got hooked because of a combination of early exposure to martial arts films, the late Dingko Singh winning the 54kg gold in the 1998 Asian Games, a women’s boxing exhibition in Imphal and a chance meeting with boxer Rebika Chiru who took her to famous coach Ibomcha Singh. “I want you to coach me,” said Mary, adding that Ibomcha was possibly taken aback by the bold approach.

Through the journey, husband Onler has more than held her hand. Mary calls him a friend, partner, soulmate and “extraordinarily graceful night-time parent” in the book. “He is the reason my medal hauls continued after marriage, putting an end to doomsday predictions about the end of my career,” she says. If Mary is a lesson in juggling motherhood, promotional commitments and boxing, it is because Onler has put his life on hold to manage everything else.

The opponents

World champion Liliya Aetbaeva of Russia hasn’t qualified for Tokyo but silver medallist Buse Naz Cakiroglu of Turkey has. Cakiroglu has lost only five times since the 2016 Games and beat Mary in the semi-final of the 2019 world championship. Virginia Fuchs of USA, who has defeated Mary twice, will also be there as will Ingrit Valencia of Colombia who lost to Mary in the 2019 world championship quarter-final. They could be among her top contenders. Cakiroglu is 25, Fuchs is 33 and Valencia 32.

But referring to Floyd Mayweather beating Canelo Alvarez in September 2013, Adams, in an interview to The Guardian, spoke about how the “older” and “more skillful” won because “he just had the smarts to outmanoeuvre the younger guy.”

Among Mary’s favourite lines from the Bible is this: “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. (Corinthinas 9:24).” So discount Mary, the world No. 3, at your peril.

But even if she doesn’t fulfill her expectations, even if she returns without a medal she will remain the standard-bearer of women’s boxing in India. One who in the absence of history and reference forged her path. If there are more girls in boxing, in sport now, it is also because Mary continues to inspire, almost two decades after becoming a world champion for the first time.

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